The Calf Bone's Connected to the...

You guys remember this little ditty?

The toe bone's connected to the ankle bone,
the ankle bone's connected to the shin bone,
the shin bone's connected to the knee bone,
the knee bone's connected to the thigh bone,
the thigh bone's connected to the hip bone,
the hip bone's connected to the back bone....

I just had a big reminder of how connected the body really is. I've had a tight left calf since a beach run on 5th January. That's a loooong time. I kept making progress with massage and needling, but then it would get sore again.

A few weeks ago, Rolf ran with me and commented that I was limping while running. That wasn't cool; I'd obviously been in denial. My gait was being affected, which means more injury building up. I tried to focus on my gait carefully and noticed that to stop limping, I had to rotate my hips more and that felt impossible - my hips and back felt stiff. I was just slamming down on my left side.

So off I went to the therapists with a new theory - that my calf tightness was perhaps originally caused at the beach run, but had long ago morphed into something else...and was much higher up the chain of muscles.

Back manipulation and needling with Ali at Ascend provided instant improvement of about 80%. Followed that up with focused back massage with Nathan Doig on Monday and back/hip work with Jon Tan today at Langer, and voila! No limping for a week. My calf pain had become nerve related, but I'd gotten so used to it I'd stopped looking outside the box to realise that the symptoms were actually different (nerve-type pain running down the entire calf, rather than just a knot in one spot).

I thought my little story might be a help to anyone else struggling with some niggling issue that's been going on too long. Get creative in your problem-solving and get someone else to watch you run.

The calf bone's connected to the back bone :)

Fujiya & Miyagi have even written a Musculoskeletal System song!